“There is a good hill. Hang him now. What is the use of waiting? Hang him to onct.” He tried to be jocular, but he overdid it. He was talking too much. I, being the scribe, was delegated to take down Jim’s confession. His hands were tied and lying listless on the table while I rolled him cigarette after cigarette. In a corner of the room sat his sister, who was a girl of the town, lolling back on a cot and looking over the whole scene with a contemptuous curl to her lips. Jim told his story with the utmost composure. It was no more to him than killing a deer. He was a chief of his tribe and had been educated, but the seventy-five dollars and a horse which Carrick had given him to commit the murder were more than he could withstand. He told how he had sneaked up behind Scott, shot him, and, taking his own boots off, ran away. Gaining courage after a while, he crept back. “He wasn’t bawlin’ no more,” so he took the trace from the harness and dragged the body into the woods. All this time the boys were outside, making ready for the hanging—it was impossible to keep him from them—so I was truly relieved when I heard the loud beat of horse hoofs and a deputy sheriff arrived on the scene, saying: “Christ! I’m too soon!” A party of us went out to Carrick’s that night. There was a white blanket of snow gleaming in the moonlight. We formed a cordon around the house while the sheriff went up to the front door. There was a wild scream when Mrs. Carrick opened it. She had sensed our errand. In a little hotel away up in the redwoods, many miles off, the father and son were taken next morning before dawn. They had stopped, in their flight, to have breakfast when the sheriff came up to them. I did not see the trial, as I had left California before it came off, but the papers stated that Carrick and the Indian were hanged and the son was sentenced to twenty years. Over the grave of Scott, however, who had been my bunkmate and friend, I placed a headstone, the naïvete of which I am afraid I was unaware at the time. In 1915 I was told by a woman I met in California that in her early childhood up at Sissons, she used to sit for half a day at a stretch and wonder what it could mean, this piece of redwood, carved with the words: WALTER SCOTT [date, etc.] MURDERED!!! R.I.P.!!!